258 MEMOIRS OF THE DUKE OF SAINT-SIMOtf.

pened; even the Dutch were ravished to be delivered of a
minister so double-dealing, so impetuous, so powerful. M. le
Due d'Orleans dispatched the Chevalier de Morcieu, a very
skilful and intelligent man, and certainly in the hands of the
Abbe Dubois, to the extreme confines of the frontiers to wait
for Alberoni, accompanying him until the moment of his em-
barkation in Provence for Italy; with orders never to lose sight
of him, to make him avoid the large towns and principal places
as much as possible; suffer no honours to be rendered to him;
above all, to hinder him from communicating with anybody, or
anybody with him; in a word, to conduct him civilly, like a
prisoner under guard.

Morcieu executed to the letter this disagreeable commission ;
all the more necessary, because, entirely disgraced as was
Alberoni, everything was to be forced from him while travers-
ing a great part of France, where all who were adverse to the
Begent might have recourse to him. Therefore it was not
without good reason that every kind of liberty was denied
him.

It may be imagined what was suffered by a man so impetuous*
and so accustomed to unlimited power; but he succeeded in
accommodating himself to such a great and sudden change of
condition; in maintaining his self-possession; in subjecting
himself to no refusals; in being sage and measured in his
manners; very reserved in speech, with an air as though he
cared for nothing; and in adapting himself to everything
without questions, without pretension, without complaining,
dissimulating everything, and untiringly pretending to regard
Morcieu as an accompaniment of honour. He received, then,
no sort of civility on the part of the Regent, of Dubois, or of
anybody; and performed the day's journeys, arranged by
Morcieu, without stopping, almost without suite, until he arrived
on the shores of the Mediterranean, where he immediately em-
barked and passed to the Genoa coast.

Alberoni, delivered of his Argus, and arrived in Italy, found
himself in another trouble by the anger of the Emperor, who
would suffer him nowhere, and by the indignation of the Court